Why Obama is wrong when he says business needs the government

[bripat9643]

Are you trying to tell me that when he starts listing all those projects, like the Hoover Dam, the highways, and the railroads, and claims that they were not built by business, he wasn't trying to give government the credit? How, exactly, do you come to that conclusion?

Because he's a liberal Democrat.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

History is full of examples of the government taking on projects that are huge because they believe they wouldn't happen otherwise. History is also full of examples of projects that businesses took on because they were needed. My favorite example of the latter is one of Obama's talking points when he claims that the government is indispensable.

So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden Gate Bridge...

Turns out that the government actually did everything it could to stop the Golden Gate bridge, and that, ultimately, it was built because of one man.

A second problem in 1929 when the US Stock Market collapsed made for more problems. The Golden Gate committee now has trouble issuing the bond needed for the construction of the bridge, even though the citizens of the surrounding area had put up their own personal lands and farms as collateral. It takes 3 more years and the wealthy President and founder of Bank of America, A.P. Giannini, to personally buy the 35 million dollar bond which he then finances through the bank. Without the bank and the intervention of private industry fueled by personal wealth, again the bridge would not have been built. By 1937 the bridge is completed—and Strauss delivers the bridge 1.7 million UNDER budget, using local non-union labor and private contractors.

www.thomas-purcell.com: Obama's Golden Gate Sized Error

Want to know what else got built without the government?

Capital needs labor, labor needs capital and both need government as the arbitrator.

Fail

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Henry Ford didn't need roads at all. Building roads was in response to the cars, not the other way around.

Wow.

Facts are like that sometimes.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Wow.

Amazing.

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

None of those lines were roads, they were just paths between the buildings, usually covered with feces and urine from the chamber pots people threw out every morning. They rarely mention that unpleasant fact in books, and never in movies unless they are playing for the comedy and pathos.

They weren't built by the government either.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Amazing.

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

I suppose telling you those lines are streets for pedestrian and horse traffic would be news.

My guess is that anyone that actually saw them would laugh if you tried to call them streets.

 

[bripat9643]

I would love to see the business climate if government didn't enforce physical or intellectual property rights.

Rightwing nirvana!

The government doesn't enforce those rights. They determine who has them and what damages are due through litigation brought by businesspersons.

So when someone breaks into a store and steals physical property, the people you call to reclaim your merchandise and catch the thief, the ones carrying guns and tasers, aren't government employees?

I'm not sure which country you live in, but here in the United States the police are government employees funded by tax dollars. YRMV.

When do the police ever catch the thief and return your merchandise? When I lived near downtown Baltimore I was robbed 7 times. The police never caught any of the thieves or recovered any of my stolen property. Most businesses rely on private security to protect them from thieves. So the answer is "no," the ones carrying guns and tasers, aren't government employees.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

So now we've come full circle from "The government doesn't enforce those rights" to "Well, there was this time in the past (and in Somalia today) where private citizens resolved enforcement on their own"

We don't live in that time or place.

Still doesn't make the case that business needs government. If anything, government has always needed business.

Show me a place any where in the world at any time in history where a market economy succeeded without public enforcement of personal and intellectual property rights.

Business can't flourish in an environment where those rules do not exist. Government makes and enforces those rules.

The drug trade, moonshiners, black markets, smuggling...

How many examples do you want?

 

[Luissa]

Henry Ford didn't need roads at all. Building roads was in response to the cars, not the other way around.

Wow.

Facts are like that sometimes.

The fact is there were roadways before Ford built his automobiles. Lol
That is why he said Wow!!

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

I suppose telling you those lines are streets for pedestrian and horse traffic would be news.

No, those are streets! In fact, some of them are...post roads! a constitutional duty of...hold it now...government! And they existed before Henry Ford built the first car.

And even worse, that big area towards the top? That's a COMMON!!! In 1722 the people of Boston believed in a publicly managed common ownership. Like Marx, 100 years before his birth!

There was no constitution in 1722.

 

[Luissa]

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

I suppose telling you those lines are streets for pedestrian and horse traffic would be news.

My guess is that anyone that actually saw them would laugh if you tried to call them streets.

http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blcar3.htm


Oh! And read a little bit about Thomas Jefferson, Lewis and Clark and what good things can come from Government funding.

 

[bripat9643]

I don't owe the government anything. They owe me protection of my rights and an opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness. The fruits of that opportunity are mine and mine alone.

But in reality you do, unless you're not a citizen. Ever heard of the Selective Service, or the draft? Thousands of Americans have been forced into the armed service and gave their lives for the government.

That's called involuntary servitude, which is expressly prohibited by the 13th Amendment.

How about taxes? Are you saying you don't pay taxes to any government entity?

The fact that government collects money from me at gunpoint doesn't prove I owe it to government.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Amazing.

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

The government didn't build horse paths or the roads cut by carts either. The government flat hadn't at all at that time, built roads since the Romans tiled roads in Britian!

Roads weren't built, they were formed by use. Are liberals really that stupid? Seriously? The government didn't build any roads, certainly not in 1722 before there ever was a government.

You should know that the Roman roads were built to move the Roman Army, not as an infrastructure investment. Rome itself had dirt tracks that were breeding grounds of infectious diseases.

 

[bripat9643]

So when someone breaks into a store and steals physical property, the people you call to reclaim your merchandise and catch the thief, the ones carrying guns and tasers, aren't government employees?

I'm not sure which country you live in, but here in the United States the police are government employees funded by tax dollars. YRMV.

I stand by my prior reply.

So those cops enforcing the law aren't government employees in your area? Which crazy state do you live in?

Mostly what cops do is shake me down for cash. I've never had a cop protect me from thieves or other predators.

 

[Luissa]

I suppose telling you those lines are streets for pedestrian and horse traffic would be news.

No, those are streets! In fact, some of them are...post roads! a constitutional duty of...hold it now...government! And they existed before Henry Ford built the first car.

And even worse, that big area towards the top? That's a COMMON!!! In 1722 the people of Boston believed in a publicly managed common ownership. Like Marx, 100 years before his birth!

There was no constitution in 1722.

No there wasn't, but there is a few Land Acts and Ordinances that mapped out streets, roadways, and public eduction.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

I suppose telling you those lines are streets for pedestrian and horse traffic would be news.

No, those are streets! In fact, some of them are...post roads! a constitutional duty of...hold it now...government! And they existed before Henry Ford built the first car.

And even worse, that big area towards the top? That's a COMMON!!! In 1722 the people of Boston believed in a publicly managed common ownership. Like Marx, 100 years before his birth!

The Common's purpose has changed over the years. It was once owned by William Blaxton (often given the modernized spelling "Blackstone"), the first European settler of Boston, until it was bought from him by the Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During the 1630s, it was used by many families as a cow pasture. However, this only lasted for a few years, as affluent families bought additional cows, which led to overgrazing, a real-life example of the Tragedy of the commons.[7] After grazing was limited in 1646 to 70 cows at a time,[8] the Boston Common continued to host cows until they were formally banned from it in 1830 by Mayor Harrison Gray Otis.[9]


Execution of Ann Hibbins on Boston Common, on charges of witchcraft, June 19, 1656. Sketch by F.T. Merril, 1886The Common was used as a camp by the British before the American Revolutionary War, from which they left for the Battle of Lexington and Concord. It was used for public hangings up until 1817, most of which were from a large oak which was replaced with gallows in 1769. In 1660 Mary Dyer was hanged there by the Puritans for preaching Quakerism.

Boston Common - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Actually, someone donated the land they owned to the city. It became a park. Way to rewrite history.

Cow pasture, park, what's the difference?

The amazing thing is that 8537 thinks people had time to go on picnics back when it took 12 hours a day just put food on the table.

 

[Luissa]

I stand by my prior reply.

So those cops enforcing the law aren't government employees in your area? Which crazy state do you live in?

Mostly what cops do is shake me down for cash. I've never had a cop protect me from thieves or other predators.

My brother was shot and they caught the kid in two days. I have a lot of respect for Cops.

 

[bripat9643]

I've seen several posts bemoaning what Obama said about businesses.

I just haven't seen where he was, specifically, talking about government.

He merely said they didn't get there on their own.
They didn't.
Without a demand and a customer base there wouldn't have been a reason to start their business.

I've been wrong before.....ask my wife.
But I just don;t see where he was giving government the credit.

It's more then that.

It's security, it's infrastructure, it's R&D, it's a judicial system and a whole lot more.

People also seem to forget, these aren't separate, mystical, magical ideas..they are interdependent human constructs.

But at the root of all this is the justification for unbridled greed.

Which, like fire..if left uncontrolled will burn you in the end.

We had infrastructure and R&D before government ever got involved in it. The police also do little to protect you from thieves. That's why we have things like neighborhood watches and private security. Every shopping mall has mall cops because the cops simply can't be counted on.

 

[bripat9643]

For all you small government types.

There are actual countries around the world with small limited governments.

That's one.

ROFL! Wrong, dipshit. Somalia is an example of government gone wild. In Somalia, local warlords have unlimited power. They can have you dragged out into the street and beaten to death at the snap of the fingers.

 

[Luissa]

What issues does the public sector know best?

Other than making life hard for the private sector.

Well, off the top of my head, water and sewer services, roads, fire, police, courts, defense, international relations, border control, health inspections, quality control for food, inspections of commericial vehicles and operators, air traffic control, inspections of commericial airplanes. Would you like more?

Excuse me?

First, nothing you have listed there is something the government knows best, some of them are not even things the government actually does. The ones that the government actually does do are things the government has declared are part of its monopoly of force.

Second, the government, the public sector, often calls in experts from the private sector to get advice on the best way to deliver those services because the public sector is run by a bunch of lawyers, not by people that actually understand the issues behind any of the services they have decided are exclusively in their purview,

I want to know what issues the public sector knows better than the private sector, not what services the public sector provides. Since you haven't named a single one I would definitely say I want more.

I am still waiting for you to answer my question on which ones the government doesn't do.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Was Henry Ford making cars before 1722? Or are the lines on this map just property marks?

The government didn't build horse paths or the roads cut by carts either. The government flat hadn't at all at that time, built roads since the Romans tiled roads in Britian!

Roads weren't built, they were formed by use. Are liberals really that stupid? Seriously? The government didn't build any roads, certainly not in 1722 before there ever was a government.

The US government didn't build post roads?

I read right here in this thread that roads weren't built until the car was invented. The map was an obvious attempt to demonstrate that roads existed before cars. Somehow, that point has flown over the conservatarian head.

Do you have any idea what a post road is?

FYI, postal carriers used to ride horses from town to town, all that was needed were a few signposts to make sure they didn't get lost. Even when wagons were common the road was nothing more than two ruts that people followed from place to place. There was no need for a graded surface, which is what most intelligent people think of when someone says road, until cars were able to go fast enough to necessitate a smooth surface.